No Matter What My Luck Might Be
by Cordeliers Club
Summary: Crossover with Balzac! It's like 1832 and people are encountering each other all over town. Javert, Vautrin, Bibi-Lupin in the same crazy literary time-warp. Purely idiotic, purely useless, purely ironic, and like half the characters are based on Vidocq.


**Before Proceeding: **This is so silly, so silly oh god, and there are no footnotes yet. But there will be! Basically the plot is: "Wouldn't it suck for the police if..." and then I wrote this fic! It is important to understand, peripherally, that for some reason Courfeyrac is totally into Victorine.

**Balzac: **I am so, so sorry.

On Tuesday a man showed up to the Musain whom no one knew. He looked so violently out of place; older even than most of the workingmen, and with such a robust black moustache and fastidious dress that Courfeyrac wondered aloud if he had somehow mistaken them for an _actual_ society of schoolteachers.

"You didn't bring him in?" Feuilly asked at that, with considerable surprise, "I thought he was certainly one of yours."

"Hardly. I don't trust men with moustaches," was Courfeyrac's response.

Enjolras, hearing this, was pricked with alarm; the bourgeois gentleman among them could not be accounted for. He had been half-listening to Courfeyrac, and now made his way warily to the man with the moustache.

"Monsieur," said Enjolras, "I am sorry I do not have the pleasure of having met you—?"

"Soon remedied, young man!" said the gentleman heartily, clapping Enjolras on the shoulder and ignoring the flinch, "my name is Vautrin. May I presume yours is Adonis?"

Enjolras blinked. "Enjolras, monsieur. I wonder if you might be looking for a conference on education?"

Vautrin was holding a glass of the Musain's wine, swirling and sniffing it as befitted something far better. He took a quaff and grinned. "Excellent stuff, this. Italian, I think, or made out in the back last week?"

"The latter, doubtlessly. Monsieur, are you—"

Vautrin cut him off: "don't you worry, I know what I'm in for, and the devil knows I won't rat you children out." At this Vautrin removed his hand from Enjolras' shoulder and offered it for a handshake. The hair from his arms surpassed his sleeve, and grew to his knuckles. His moustache and his wig were black; Enjolras noted that the fuzz on his hand was red.

--

At the end of the night, Enjolras shared this information with Courfeyrac and Combeferre as they left.

"He must have dyed his eyebrows, as well," Combeferre offered, impressed.

"So he's embarrassed to have red hair. Most men are. Probably has glued on his wig. It's a vanity, it's not a disguise." said Courfeyrac.

"It's just very odd."

"It is that, but not inherently suspicious."

"Courfeyrac, you didn't speak two words with him; I shook his hand. He is—unnerving, I felt like Faust."

"Like Faust," came a jovial voice behind them, "you don't seem to know what happens _wenn man vom Teufel spricht._"

And Vautrin stepped into the streetlight.

The three students stared, each suddenly pale.

"He appears! Come now, my little friends, don't look so startled, it's only German. Speak of the devil and _he appears. _I've read the Goethe in its original. Much better _auf Deutsch_! Now you were saying? Oh, don't get embarrassed, go on, I'll just stroll along if that's all right, I am I believe, going the same way."

"Monsieur Vautrin," said Courfeyrac, his hands growing cold.

"Oh don't! You young men are so fastidious with your manners, and I don't give two shits who says what about me. And now I've offended you! But hurry on, you have young women languishing in boudoirs and I am late to dinner."

--

The next morning, Courfeyrac was leaving the classroom after role, when he took notice of the footsteps behind him and saw Vautrin.

He stopped dead in the street. Vautrin laughed, and the noise was like a dog barking.

"Don't panic! Don't panic, young man, you are like a maiden surprised in the bath!" Vautrin raised both hands, "I have only come to return your wallet."

"You have me confused with someone," Courfeyrac put a hand to his waistcoat pocket, and found it empty.

"Well it isn't there, is it, since it's in my hand," said Vautrin, handing it over, "here you go, needn't look so shocked."

"Thank you," said Courfeyrac warily.

"No need! I am perfectly glad to help out a young friend, sir. Very pleased!" he took Courfeyrac's elbow with both hands, "Glad to do it! It's only that I need the smallest favor from you, the simplest thing."

"What do you need, sir?" Courfeyrac made a small movement with his arm which indicated, very politely, his discomfort with the intimacy of Vautrin's hold on him. He expected Vautrin to let go, instead the grip tightened with the precision and boundless capacity of a welding vice.

"The simplest thing," Vautrin repeated, "and with your best interest at heart, I need you to leave off pursuing the mademoiselle Victorine. She is tiresome. I am quite familiar with the poor damsel, and you waste your time."

"_Sir_," Courfeyrac hissed, and the grip tightened still, "I protest on Victorine's behalf and my own, now if you _please_, I must leave."

"Come now!" Said Vautrin, "don't defy me, that's not sporting, and I can break your arm anyway! Good mistresses are plentiful in Paris, and the devil knows, richer and less sallow than Victorine! I know many good women to adore a pretty young lad like you! I shall have to introduce you, how is tonight? We may both wear yellow gloves and I shall pay the coachman."

"Let me go," said Courfeyrac.

"You can let yourself go, but I will keep the arm. You are young, you think you know far more of love than you do, and Victorine is sure to disappoint. And anyway it's owed to me, after I had been so kind to track you down with your money."

"Since you will not let go, sir, I shall walk directly to the Paris Prefecture and you will be arrested," said Courfeyrac viciously.

"Oh don't!" Vautrin's voice was low, conspiratorial, as if they were old friends, "I don't think the sûreté will be pleased with your friends, all those abased folks. That gentleman glowering at us across the road is one of their inspectors, in any case. See the one with the whiskers and the gray coat? We can walk over and explain our differences, see if he won't laugh and ship you off the prison?"

--

While Vautrin, in a wig and dyed moustache, was in the Latin Quarter, the man hunting him, the new chief detective of the Sûreté, was unfortunately elsewhere. This man, Bibi-Lupin, strolled down the rue Plumet, trying to affect an expression that was not too murderous. He was approaching 54 rue Plumet, and it was possible that there, he would find Jacques Collin, known elsewhere as Vautrin, at long last.

A very suspicious old man was said to live at 54, a detective said he seemed to conceal his chest as if it were branded, and for Bibi-Lupin, suspicion was enough. Collin could assume any disguise—"like Mephistopheles, my God, he is probably disguised as a poodle," Bibi-Lupin muttered—and so if he had to demand proof of identity from every man in Paris it would not be a small price. He was so deep in this thought that he did not see the old gentleman close the gate and make down the street until they were only steps apart.

Bibi-Lupin saw white hair, which was not Collin's, but the man was robust for his age—as broad and with as lively a step as Collin, and Bibi-Lupin pounced.

"Trompe-la-Mort?" he said, hoping to catch the convict unguarded.

The old man looked puzzled, saying, "pardon me?" in a tone very unlike Collin, who was quicker and far too prone to cleverness.

"I say, Jacques Collin, how are you, old man?" Bibi-Lupin tried again.

"Monsieur, you have it wrong, I am Urbain Fabre."

He wore no wig, Bibi-Lupin saw plainly that the man's hair was white of its own nature. And perhaps he was taller than Collin.

"Pleased to meet you, Monsieur Fabre," said Bibi-Lupin, seizing the old man's hand. The fine hairs on its back were white, and without a tinge of red, and so he concluded with disappointment: "and now I must be on my way."

Bibi-Lupin could have growled with frustration. But he would find Collin. He would find him and there would be no option to cheat death; death would be inevitable. Making his way north, he heard thunder in the sky and then he did growl. Collin was somewhere, warm and dry, counting out his money and seducing accomplices to his criminality.

But he could not run forever. No, not even Jacques Collin, not even the devil himself could run forever from justice.

--

Late that night, Bibi-Lupin's fervor had been extinguished by the persistent, dark Paris rain. Out of brooding habit he dipped into his snuffbox to discover that it was damp, unusable. He cursed and violently threw it into the sewer, venting frustration because he thought he was alone in the rainy dusk. The street flowed with rain and shadows, and Bibi-Lupin heard footsteps.

And then striding from the shadows under a streetlamp, the form of a tall man was revealed, with an iron-colored watchcoat buttoned to his chin.

This man slowed his pace to squint at the chief detective, and with a flash of recognition stopped moving entirely.

"Monsieur!" said this man in the gray coat, removing his hat. Bibi-Lupin recognized Inspector Javert, staid and humorless, doing God-knows-what in Saint-Marcel. By virtue of the whiskers covering his cheeks he was probably not even cold. And then Javert did an extraordinary thing upon recognizing his superior: he offered Bibi-Lupin a pinch of his own bracing, mentholated snuff.

"Very decent," said Bibi-Lupin, sniffing it gratefully, "very decent of you, Inspector Javert. I trust you have had a day more acceptable than my own."

Javert took a pinch of snuff for himself. "Odd, certainly odd. Certainly, I failed to find the old convict."

"You don't say! I myself was disappointed similarly. Jacques Collin, or as we call him Tromp-la-Mort, failed to be who I thought he was."

"How do you mean that?"

"There lives an old man on the rue Plumet, of curious strength and _resemblance_ to Collin, that I thought perhaps I would roll lucky and capture the man before dinner."

"And you did not."

Bibi-Lupin glowered into the rain, conscious vaguely of Javert doing the same thing. "I did not by half. I merely startled an old gentleman."

"These old convicts, it is incredible how they burrow like insects into Paris. There is a convict from Toulon, who was merely twenty-four sixty one in 1815, who is now my Ahasver, he is everywhere but I cannot catch him. His name is Valjean."

"We shall wear them out, shall we? No man can survive forever hunted."

They paused for another pinch each of snuff, listening to the spattering rain.

"And these students!" Javert said, when they were done, "today I saw a young student arm-in-arm with a man with a disreputable moustache—it looked fake, and for a moment I thought the man was Valjean. I see him everywhere. It was not, of course, but I am sure they would have come to blows had the man not noticed me. The university makes these young men too violent."

Bibi-Lupin nodded. "There is little worse than ideas to young people. I am sorry we were not able to help each other today."

"What a thing it would have been, had we both caught these convicts!"

--

NOTES:

1. Of course my footnotes will not just be Explaining Balzac because this fic will be no fun for you if you haven't read, like, Papa Goriot at least. But. A few notes on Vautrin: his real name is Jacques Collin, his nickname is Trompe-la-mort, and he flirts with dudes. He is also a burly hairy redhead. And adores exclamation points! And likes to brag about his literacy!

2. Balzac is much more subtle and clever with his Vautrin/Mephistopheles allusions, but I clearly have no problem covering the whole thing in one clumsy blow of dialogue. _"wenn man vom Teufel spricht", _is German for "speak of the devil".

3. There is not much Balzac to support this bit here that Vautrin is capable of great feats of pickpocketry. His style is more...banking schemes. But again, I am writing fanfiction and I know nothing about banking schemes or how they would effect Courfeyrac and so, voila, all criminals steal wallets.

4. Bibi-Lupin! Chief of the Sûreté! And so handsome.

5. Each saw the other's convict-obsession, and then they had some snuff. The end! Sorry Balzac.


End file.
